spyware/malware and linux?

Protagoras wrote:
> How vulnerable is Linux to spyware, malware, trojans, etc. compared to
> MS-Windows? I am a novice linux user, I guess my main concern, not knowing
> too much about linux security or vulnerability, is can trojan/malware get
> into my system when I download rpm or tarball open source applications, and
> if so how to prevent that?
>
> I got quite a wake-up call recently when someone used my credit card,
> obviously such info stolen from some online transaction, because they had
> the 3 digit security code, my phone number, name, etc. I have since turned
> off cookies, etc. But I want to learn more, harden my system, get wise
> regarding computer insecurity, lack of privacy while browsing, etc.
>

No OS is secure today! Some are more often used and of course
vulnerabilities of these OS's will be abused more often.

The question is, how do you practice security? If you work as root or
administrator and don't care about patches, don't use the internet.

Otherwies (in my opinion) Unix/Linux provides very good mechanisms to
avoid this kind of crap, if one knows how to use them.

As mentioned by the community before, make sure to check the integrity
and origin of the software you download. Also not everything you get
from trusted sites is secure, because you need to trust the admins and
security of the source sites (can you really do that).

Eric